Richard III by Chris Skidmore

Author:Chris Skidmore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2018-03-07T05:00:00+00:00

11

‘THE FACT OF AN ENTERPRISE’

The royal progress continued to journey through the Midlands, resting at Coventry, at Leicester on 19 August, then at Nottingham Castle, where Edward IV had started a programme of remodelling the medieval castle with modern fifteenth-century quarters. It was to become one of Richard’s favoured residences: the king had begun to consider the need to reinforce the status of his own lineage and the Yorkist dynasty as it now appeared. Already he had named his son Edward of Middleham to be Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on 19 July; at Nottingham, on 24 August, Edward was created Prince of Wales and earl of Chester, though curiously the traditional appointment as duke of Cornwall was omitted. Richard wrote to the archbishops how he had performed the formal ceremony, ‘as the custom is by the girding of the sword, the handing over and setting of the garland on his head, and of the gold ring on his finger, and of the gold staff in his hand’.1 Richard explained in his letter how he had chosen to elevate his son, ‘having great care that, in the great anxieties which press upon us, those who are necessary to support us should not now seem to be lacking’.

The creation of his son Edward as Prince of Wales at Nottingham would be the prelude to a far greater and impressive ceremony that Richard had planned for his homecoming into his heartland, the city of York. The Crowland chronicler wrote how Richard was ‘now desirous, with all speed, to show in the north, where in former years he had chiefly resided, the high and kingly station which he had acquired’. The day before Prince Edward’s creation, on 23 August, Richard’s secretary, John Kendall, had written ‘in haste’ from Nottingham to the mayor and aldermen at York, informing them that the king and queen had ‘in all their progress … been worshipfully received with pageants’. Throughout the journey, the king’s judges had sat ‘in every place, determining the complaints of poor folk with due punishment of offenders against his laws’. ‘I truly know the king’s mind and entire affection that his grace bears towards you and your worshipful city, for your many kind and loving deservings shown to his grace heretofore’, Kendall wrote, ‘which his grace will never forget, and intends therefore so to do unto you that all the kings that ever reigned over you did never so much.’ The city was advised, however, that it should plan to receive the king and queen, ‘as honourably as your wisdoms can imagine’, with pageants, ‘such good’ speeches, and ‘clothes of arras and tapestry work’ in the streets, ‘for there come many southern lords and men of worship with them which will mark greatly your recieving of their graces’.2

On 29 August, the royal party – Richard, Queen Anne and Prince Edward – entered the city gates of York through Micklegate Bar, the gateway into the city upon which the head of Richard’s father, Richard, duke of York, had been impaled after his defeat and death at Wakefield nearly a quarter of a century before.

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